Born to Russian peasants in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev grew up under Stalin’s regime. At the age of 15, he joined the Komsomol, or “Youth Communist League,” and drove a combine harvester at a state-run farm in his hometown. Local party officials recognized his promise and sent him to law school at Moscow State University, where he became an active Communist Party member.
Journeys abroad gradually made Gorbachev critical of the inefficient Soviet system, further strained when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and he quickly ascended the ladder of power. He became the youngest full member of the Politburo, then the highest executive committee in the Soviet Union. In 1985, after two general secretaries of the Politburo died within a year of each other, the Party was looking for fresh, new leadership.
On March 11, 1985, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he set about installing bold reforms. Domestically, he pushed the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient, to increase worker production, and to ra
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Mikhail Gorbachev
(1931-2022)
Who Was Mikhail Gorbachev?
Mikhail Gorbachev became a delegate to the Communist Party Congress in 1961. He was elected general secretary in 1985. He became the first president of the Soviet Union in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize for Peace that same year. He resigned in 1991 and founded the Gorbachev Foundation. He remained active in social and political causes throughout the remainder of his life.
Early Life
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, to a Russian-Ukrainian family in the village of Privolnoye, in the Krasnogvardeisky District near the Stavropol Territory of southern Russia.
Gorbachev’s parents were peasants. His father, Sergei, operated a combine harvester for a living. Sergei was drafted into the Russian Army when the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941. Three years later, he was wounded in action and returned home to resume operating farm machinery. Sergei passed on his experience to his young son, Mikhail. Mikhail Gorbachev was a quick learner and showed an aptitude for mechanics. As a teenager, Gorbachev contribu